


who would take us to be women?

by tasteslikemiso



Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-23
Updated: 2010-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-13 22:18:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tasteslikemiso/pseuds/tasteslikemiso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The deaths lie in the aftermath, but her only enemy is time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who would take us to be women?

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by PrisonBrokeHost. Title from the August 21, 2005 prompt for [](http://31-days.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://31-days.livejournal.com/)**31_days** .

Unohana wished and did not wish for Isane beside her now. Her lieutenant wouldn't have wanted to stand back while the others threw down their lives, but she would have known that she would have greater success treating the wounded than she would running with Itegumo against Aizen.

_Isane did not have a weak constitution, a girl who fainted or got sick at the sight of blood wouldn't have made it one day as a rank-and-file in the 4th, much less have been promoted to lieutenant. No, her horror was expressed in other ways: night terrors and sleep paralysis that alternated with equally taxing bouts of insomnia._

The battlefield was littered with bodies, Unohana did not wonder how many she could save because she was too busy saving them. Triage. She did not want to think about choosing, singling her comrades out for death. But neither could she treat them indiscriminately. He had been messy, but true to his word, none of them had lost consciousness. The town lay in ruins and the air was still smoky and thick with death.  
 _  
She reassured her lieutenant privately, but when she was at work her full attention was focused on replenishing reiatsu, staunching the flow of blood, reattaching lost limbs. Isane would steel herself, not against nausea but against the desperate eyes and harsh pulls on her sleeves. She could not promise them survival, but she smiled weakly and told them to hang on._

Unohana was almost certain she would lose Sarugaki, even after she had left her in Minazuki's care. Now that Matsumoto had left, Unohana was not certain that her internal organs would hold up under much duress. She could not think of healing the arrancar now, the luxury she had in Hueco Mundo, not when so many of their own had fallen. She did not even know if she truly had the ability to see all of them through today.

_"Triage, Isane. You must allocate the limited resources we have to treat those who are most likely to benefit from treatment."_

_"But, taichou, I-" she laid her head back, wanting to explain that surely there were others more deserving of that immediacy than herself._

_"Healers are the most valuable, because they allow you to save lives that might be otherwise lost." She had smiled, and that had ended it._

It was harder to ration care when your patients were so impudent, and had she not been in such a dire situation she might have smiled at Hitsugaya's stubbornness, as he continued to gesture feebly in Hinamori's direction. As it were, she smiled anyway, with a motherly sort of patience she did not feel and left him as soon as his condition had stabilized. She faced the same sort of reproachful look from Shunsui, who might never forgive her for treating him before Ukitake.  
  
 _"Don't you hear them, taichou?" she had nearly screamed. But Unohana did not hear the plaintive moans rising from the sprawling, mangled bodies. She could not._

_"Category 0, Isane," she reminded her gently as she continued to minister to yet another urgently in need. Category 0 was the label reserved for those who were already dead, or whose injuries, if administered to, would compromise the treatment of higher-priority casualties._

Being a shinigami, being a healer meant knowing and accepting that there would always be those whom you could not save. Isane would learn that, in time.


End file.
